Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

Search form

Department of Bad Analogies

In the course of wondering whether it may not be so important that so few US government personnel speak Pashto, Spencer Ackerman writes:

You don’t have to speak French to craft a good U.S. France policy.

That’s a fair point, although many, many more U.S. diplomats dealing with France speak French than do the folks dealing with Afghanistan speak Pashto (or Dari, or…). But the problem is that we don’t have a normal diplomatic relationship with Afghanistan – we’re trying to transform the entire society. Counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen tells us Afghanistan is all part of a “global counterinsurgency.” [.pdf] This, of course, is a somewhat more ambitious job than blowing through the cocktail circuit in Paris.

Just to press the point, as only one of eight “best practices” for counterinsurgents, Kilcullen lists “cueing and synchronization of development, governance, and security efforts, building them in a simultaneous, coordinated way that supports the political strategy.” Another COIN guru, John Nagl writes [.pdf] that “The soldiers who will win these wars require an ability not just to dominate land operations, but to change whole societies…”

In short, we probably ought to distinguish between France and Afghanistan.